He ran down the heart of the old midway, where the weight guessers, fortune-tellers, and dancing gypsies had once worked. He lowered his chin and held his arms out like a glider, and every few steps he would jump, the way children do, hoping running will turn to flying. It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired maintenaance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.
And then eddie stopped running. He heard something. A voice, tinny, as if coming through a megaphone.
“How about him, ladies and gentlemen? Have you ever seen such a horrible sight? …”
Eddie was standing by an empty ticket kiosk in front of a large theater. The sign above read
The sideshow. The freak house. The ballyhoo hall. Eddie recalled them shutting this down at least 50 years ago, about the time television became popular and people didn’t need sideshows to tickle their imagination.
“Look well upon this savage, born into a most peculiar handicap …”
Eddie peered into the entrance. He had encountered some odd people here. There was Jolly Jane, who weighed over 500 pounds and needed two men to push her up the stairs. There were conjoined twin sisters, who shared a spine and played musical instruments. There were men who swallowed swords, women with beards, and a pair of Indian brothers whose skin went rubbery from being stretched and soaked in oils, until it hung in bunches from their limbs.
Eddie, as a child, had felt sorry for the sideshow cast. They were forced to sit in booths or on stages, sometimes behind bars, as patrons walked past them, leering and pointing. A barker would ballyhoo the oddity, and it was a barker’s voice that Eddie heard now.
“Only a terrible twist of fate could leave a man in such a pitiful condition! From the farthest corner of the world, we have brought him for your examination—“
Eddie entered the darkened hall. The voice grew louder.
“This tragic soul has endured a perversion of nature—“
It was coming from the other side of a stage.
“Only here, at the World’s Most Curious Citizens, can you draw this near…”
Eddie pulled aside the curtain.
“Feast your eyes upon the most unus—“
The barker’s voice vanished. And Eddie stepped back in disbelief.
There, sitting in a chair, alone on the stage, was a middle-aged man with narrow, stooped shoulders, naked from the waist up. His belly sagged over his belt. His hair was closely cropped. His lips were thin and his face was long and drawn. Eddie would have long since forgotten him, were it not for one distinctive feature.
His skin was blue.
“Hello, Edward,” he said. “I have been waiting for you.”
“Don’t be afraid…” the Blue Man said, rising slowly from his chair. “Don’t be afraid…”
His voice was soothing, but Eddie could only stare. He had barely known this man. Why was he seeing him now? He was like one of those faces that pops into your dreams and the next morning you say, “You’ll never guess who I dreamed about last night.”
“Your body feels like a child’s, right?”
Eddie nodded.
“You were a child when you knew me, that’s why. You start with the same feelings you had.”
Start what? Eddie thought.
The Blue Man lifted his chin. His skin was a grotesque shade, a graying blueberry. His fingers were wrinkled. He walked outside. Eddie followed. The pier was empty. The beach was empty. Was the entire planet empty?
“Tell me something,” the Blue Man said. He pointed to a two-humped wooden roller coaster in the distance. The Whipper. It was built in the 1920s, before under-friction wheels, meaning the cars couldn’t turn very quickly—unless you wanted them launching off the track. “The Whipper. Is it still the ‘fastest ride on earth’?”
Eddie looked at the old clanking thing, which had been torn down years ago. He shook his head no.
“Ah,” the Blue Man said. “I imagined as much. Things don’t change here. And there’s none of that peering down from the clouds, I’m afraid.”
Here? Eddie thought.
The Blue Man smiled as if he’d heard the question. He touched Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie felt a surge of warmth unlike anything he had ever felt before. His thoughts came spilling out like sentences.
How did I die?
“An accident,” the Blue Man said.
How long have I been dead?
“A minute. An hour. A thousand years.”
Where am I?
The Blue Man pursed his lips, then repeated the question thoughtfully. “Where are you?” He turned and raised his arms. All at once, the rides at the old Ruby Pier cranked to life: The Ferris wheel spun, the Dodgem Cars smacked into each other, the Whipper clacked uphill, and the Parisian Carousel horses bobbed on their brass poles to the cheery music of the Wurlitzer organ. The ocean was in front of them. The sky was the color of lemons.
“Where do you think?” the Blue Man asked. “Heaven.”
No! Eddie shook his head violently. No! The Blue Man seemed amused.
“No? It can’t be heaven?” he said. “Why? Because this is where you grew up?”
Eddie mouthed the word Yes.
“Ah.” The Blue Man nodded. “Well. People often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps. This, for me, is the second. And for you, the first.”
He led Eddie through the park, passing cigar shops and sausage stands and the “flat joints,” where suckers lost their nickels and dimes.
Heaven? Eddie thought. Ridiculous. He had spent most of his adult life trying to get away from Ruby Pier. It was an amusement park, that’s all, a place to scream and get wet and trade your dollars for kewpie dolls. The thought that this was some kind of blessed resting place was beyond his imagination.
He tried again to speak, and this time he heard a small grunt from his chest. The Blue Man turned.
“Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive.” He smiled. “It helps you listen.”
There are five people you meet in heaven,” the Blue Man suddenly said. “Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.”
Eddie looked confused.
“People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless.